The Dawn of Time …

1) Start by creating a new document, any size will do. For the purposes of this thinger I’m going to make mine 800×600 (72dpi, RGB). Give it a background colour, I’m going for a brownish colour #392c1a; don’t worry, you aren’t crazy to think that the morning sky doesn’t look brown. Blindly follow me, silly sheep!

Adding Clouds

Okay, so the sky might be kind of bland so we’re going to make some pretty clouds that could also double as creepy mist.

2.1) Create a new document that is at least double to triple the size of your sunset document. The larger the document, the smaller your clouds will be. Try it out a few times to get something you like, or be arbitrarily satisfied with your first render. My document is 1500×1500, with a white background.

2.2) We want black and white clouds, so press D to reset the colour palette to black and white.

2.3) Filter > Render > Clouds

2.4) Levels (Ctrl + L), add some contrast to the clouds.

2.5) Drag the large clouds into your sunset document and resize it until it fits inside.

2.6) Change the layer mode to soft light and drop the opacity to around 15%, or whatever looks best.

Don’t Pass on Grass!

I feel like I should change the title of this subsection.

3) Using the pen tool create something that might resemble grass or a hilly landscape. The colour I’m using is #3d4c1f.

3.1) Use the clouds you made before to add some texture to your grass. I’m using a clipping mask and setting the blend mode to Overlay, opacity to 7%. To make a clipping mask right click on the clouds layer select “Create Clipping Mask”, alternatively you can hold down alt and select between the cloud layer and the grass layer. You’ll notice that your cursor will change — it looks like two overlapping circles.

3.2) Ctrl+Click on the grass layer, make a new layer, add some yellow (#f4ca49) sunlight onto the top of it with the gradient tool. Keep it at 100%, set it’s blend mode to Overlay. Do not deselect. Instead add a 6px Guassian blur to it (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur). Deselect (ctrl+D).

3.3) The sun is setting, so let’s add some shadows toward the bottom of the frame. Ctrl+Click on the grass to select it, create a new layer, and add a black gradient to the bottom of it. Nothing too harsh. I have mine set to 45% opacity, overlay.

Adding The Sun

Now we’re at the meat of the tutorial: the sun. Without this, the entire tutorial is meaningless and is doomed to suffer in a life of darkness. It’s fitting that this is the longest part of the tutorial, so brace yourself!

4) Make a white circle. Obviously you’ll want it to be behind your awesome grass. 

4.1) Ctrl+click on the white sun circle and do a radial gradient fill with an orangey-yellow colour. Deselect (ctrl+D). You want the glow to go onto the grass, so this should be above your grassy layer. Apply a Gaussian Blur (10px) on this happy yellow gradient.

4.2) Next come the bad-ass sunrays. Make a triangular ray shape that you’re satisifed with. Add a radial gradient to the shape with an orangey-yellow colour (be sure you’ve created a new layer for your sun ray).  

4.3) Duplicate the sun ray and rotate/position/resize them until your rays look appealing. Experiment with sizing and position.  Change the layer mode on all of the sun rays to Soft Light, Opacity: 100%; I’ve put all of my rays in a group (the little folder) and changed the blend mode on the group. 

4.4) Now we’ve got to do something that is kind of hard to explain, but here we go: duplicate the bright white sun orb. Place it behind the sun rays. Grab the smudge tool and start smudging it out (it will probably ask you to rasterize the layer, do it!). Make it look similar to what you see below. 

4.5) Drop the opacity of the smudged sun layer to about 20%

4.6) Add a big white radial gradient on a new layer above the sun.  

4.7) Next, use the polygonal lasso tool to make multiple triangular selections that extend past the edge of the document. Select the “add to selection” option at the top so you can create multiple selections. 

4.8) Erase inside the selection area on your white gradient layer. This will give us a radial gradient with missing pieces. The opacity of the eraser is set to 21%.  

4.9) Set the blend mode of the radial gradient layer to overlay. Duplicate the layer and flip the duplicated layer (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal). Then you should end up with our sun!
 

Cleaning up

There’s a few things we can do to help make this sunset look even better. Adding a moon and some stars, darkening the top of the image, and I’ve got a little trick for making the whole scene a bit more dramatic. You could also easily make this a sunrise by making the background orangeish/bluish/pinkish. Heh, you could qualify this is a sunrise too, I suppose. Wouldn’t you be surprised if I ended this tutorial with “HAHA SUCKER. YOU’VE MADE A SUNRISE INSTEAD OF A SUNSET”. Anyway:

5.1) Add a black gradient to the top of the document. Drop the opacity to around 40%, blend mode:  soft light. 

5.2) Select and duplicate all the layers (Layer > Duplicate Layer). With the duplicated layers still selected, press Ctrl+E (merge down). This makes a flattened version of your image. Making sure that it’s your top-most layer, set the blend mode to overlay and reduce the opacity until the scene looks fancy (I’ve dropped it to 75%). I have also blurred this mega-duplicated layer with a 10px Gaussian Blur.
 

5.3) If a copper-ish sunset isn’t your thing try changing the colour of the background. Add a gradient and you can get some really cool effects, as the image below demonstrates. 
 

Dust Your Hands!

Hopefully the tutorial worked out for you! Now you’ve got a sunrise/sunset that you can stare at without fearing blindness and/or cancer. Rejoice and experiment!